Martin bags a GLAAD Me­dia Award

RUS­SELL Sim­mons, Ricky Martin and the HBO drama se­ries True Blood are among this year’s re­cip­i­ents of me­dia awards from the Gay and Les­bian Al­liance Against Defama­tion.

Other win­ners of the 22nd An­nual GLAAD Me­dia Awards, pre­sented on Satur­day in New York, in­clude the NBC com­edy 30 Rock and CNN’s An­der­son Cooper 360 for its se­ries on gay teenage sui­cides.

Mu­sic mogul Sim­mons re­ceived the Ex­cel­lence in Me­dia Award.

Martin was cited for an ap­pear­ance on The Oprah Win­frey Show in which the pop singer dis­cussed rais­ing twin boys and his de­ci­sion to come out as gay.

Span­ish-lan­guage net­works Univi­sion and Tele­mu­ndo were also recog­nised.

Scis­sor Sis­ters were named out­stand­ing mu­sic artists for the al­bum Night Work.

The web­site Essence. com was saluted for out­stand­ing dig­i­tal jour­nal­ism.

Non-elec­tronic me­dia win­ners in­clude The New York Times colum­nist Frank Rich and Peter David for his Marvel comic book X-Fac­tor.

The GLAAD Me­dia Awards recog­nise fair, ac­cu­rate and in­clu­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the les­bian, gay, bi­sex­ual and trans­gen­der com­mu­nity and the is­sues that af­fect their lives in the me­dia.

Win­ners were an­nounced in 25 of this year’s to­tal of 32 me­dia cat­e­gories.

The re­main­ing awards will be pre­sented at cer­e­monies to be held in Los An­ge­les and San Fran­cisco in April and May, re­spec­tively.